Those are his own words.
And now, Semen Afanasevich, with regard to your last remark, that Yasnaya Polyana of the years 1862 to 1870 gives the impression of a ‘home’ in which literary interests had been removed to the second floor — I repeat once more that there was no such ‘home’; it is true that I was quite a young girl, in my eighteenth year, when I married, and I only vaguely realized the great importance of the husband whom I adored. Now I have come to the end of the page.
With respect and devotion,
S. Tolstoy.
Nearly three years separate the going away and death of Leo N. Tolstoy from the writing of her autobiography by S. A. T. It might have been expected that that interval of time would have stilled the pain in her heart and that her soul would have found peace from her sufferings. But S. A. T. is far from peace and reconciliation. Pain, a void in her heart, a protest against some one or something are felt in every word of her autobiography. In her work she has given new and interesting information about her family; she has dwelt upon her children, the guests who visited Yasnaya Polyana, the literary works of her husband, without giving us anything new; and then she concentrated all her attention upon the domestic drama. The domestic drama is the centre round which all the thoughts and all the feelings of S. A. T. turn.
In her story about this domestic drama she has not sinned against the truth; she has gone back again into the past deeply and with sincerity — every one who reads her work without prejudice will admit this. And yet one feels that it is not for nothing that she tells of family difficulties and pours out before us the pain of her soul. Continual references to the difficulties of her position as a mother, insistent emphasis upon the mutual love of herself and her husband, and the allusions to “friends” who entered the house, got possession of the mind, heart, and will of Leo N., and disturbed the harmony of their married life — all this creates an impression in the reader’s mind that S. A. T., in writing her autobiography, was guided by a definite purpose, that of contradicting the unfavourable rumours about her which circulated everywhere and were getting into newspapers and magazines.
This desire, which is masked in the autobiography, is definitely expressed by S. A. T. in another place, in her preface to Leo N. Tolstoy’s Letters to His Wife, published in 1913. There she says frankly: “This, too, has induced me to publish these letters, that after my death, which in all likelihood is near, people will, as usual, wrongly judge and describe my relations to my husband and his to me. Then let them study and form their judgment upon living and genuine data, and not upon guesses, gossip and inventions.”
We shall understand S. A. T.’s desire, if we consider her position. It is true that the great honour of being the wife of a genius fell to the lot of S. A. T., but there also fell to her lot the difficult task of creating favourable conditions for the life and development of that genius. She knew the joy of living with a genius, but she also knew the horror of living in public, so that her every movement, smile, frown, incautious word was in everyone’s eyes and ears and was caught up by the newspapers and spread over the whole world, recorded in diaries and reminiscences as material for future judgments upon her. Forty-eight years is a long period. Many unnecessary words were spoken in that time, many incautious movements were made; and for every one she will be made to answer before the court of mankind. S. A. T. knew this, and with an anxious heart she prepared herself for the judgment. The Autobiography and L. N. Tolstoy’s Letters to his Wife are the last words of the accused. We should listen to them carefully and with attention, weighing every word. If S. A. T. bears a responsibility before all mankind, each of us before our conscience has a responsibility for whatever verdict he may pass upon her. We must judge sternly, but justly.
S. A. T.’s wish has been carried out. In the autobiography printed below two new chapters are substituted for the first half of Chapter III in the original draft, and an independent Chapter V has been made out of the last half of the original third chapter. Passages cut out of this third chapter are given in full in notes 20, 38, and 43.
Our notes are given at the end of the autobiography.
Vassili Spiridonov.
I
I WAS BORN on 22 August, 1844, in the country, at the village of Pokrovskoye in the Manor of Glyebov-Stryeshnev, and up to the time of my marriage I spent every summer there. In the winter our family lived in Moscow, in the Kremlin at the house near the Troizki Gate, which belonged to the Crown, for my father was court physician and also principal physician to the Senate and Ordnance Office.
My father was a Lutheran, but my mother belonged to the Orthodox Church. The investigations of my sister, T. A. Kuzminskii, and of my brother, A. A. Bers, show, with regard to my father’s origin, that it was his grandfather who emigrated from Germany to Russia. During the reign of the Empress Elisabeth Petrovna, regiments were raised in Russia for which new instructors were required. At the request of the Empress, the King of Prussia sent four officers of the Horse Guards to Petersburg; among them was Captain Ivan Bers, who, after serving for several years in Russia, was killed at the battle of Zorndorf. He left a widow and one son, Evstafii. All that is known about her is that she was called Marie, that she was a baroness, and that she died young, leaving a moderate fortune to her son, Evstafii.
Evstafii Ivanovich lived in Moscow and married Elisabeth Ivanovna Wulfert, belonging to an old, aristocratic, Westphalian family. She had two sons, Alexander and Andrey, my father. Both were medical men and studied at the Moscow University.
In 1812 all the property of Evstafii Ivanovich was destroyed by fire, including all his houses, documents, and his seal with his coat-of-arms, a bee-hive with a swarm of bees attacking a bear, from which we derive our family name, Bers (Bär in German means bear). The right to the coat-of-arms was not restored to my father, though applications were made by his descendants; permission was given only to use a bee-hive and bees on the coat-of-arms.
After the war of 1812 the government made a small grant of money to Evstafii Ivanovich, and my grandmother, Elizabeth Ivanovna, when she became a widow, managed with difficulty to educate her sons. After finishing their studies at the medical schools of the university, the brothers Bers began to earn their own living. The elder, Alexander settled in Petersburg, the younger lived with his mother in Moscow.
At the age of thirty-four Andrey married Lyubov Alexandrovna Islavin, who was sixteen years old and the daughter of Alexander Mikhailovich Islenev and of Princess Sophie Petrovna Kozlovskii, née Countess Zavadovskii.
My mother’s descent was as follows: Count Peter Vasilevich Zavadovskii, my mother’s grandfather, was the well-known statesman and favourite of the Empress Catherine II. Under Alexander I he became the first Minister of Education in Russia. He was married to Countess Vera Nikolaevna Apraxin, who was a maid-of-honour, a peeress in her own right, and a remarkable beauty. The elder daughter, Countess Sophie Petrovna Zavadovskii, at the age of sixteen was married against her will to Prince Kozlovskii; she had one son by him, but, after a short and unhappy married life, left him and had a liaison with Alexander Mikhailovich Islenev, with whom she lived for the remainder of her life. She died in childbirth, but had previously borne him three sons and three daughters, of whom the youngest, Lyubov Alexandrovna, was my mother.
Sophie Petrovna lived permanently on my grandfather’s estate in the village Krasnoye, and there she was buried near the church. It was said that she induced a priest to marry her to my grandfather. She used to say: “I want to be the wife of Alexander Mikhailovich at any rate in the sight of God, if not in the view of man.”
My grandfather, Alexander Mikhailovich Islenev, of an old aristocratic family, took part in the battle of Borodino, after which he was given a commission in the Preobrazhenskii Guards. Subsequently he was aide-de-camp to Count Chernishov. The family name “Islenev” was not given to his children by Sophie Petrovna; the marriage was not considered legal, and the descendants now bear the name “Islavin.” Many of them rose to high rank.
II
MY FATHER AND mother had a large family, and I was their second daughter. My father had, besides his government posts, a very large medical practice and often overworked. He tried to give us the best education and surrounded us with all the comforts of life. My mother did the same, but she also instilled into us the idea that, as we had no fortune at all, and the family was large, we must prepare ourselves in order to earn our own livings. Besides learning our own lessons we had to teach our younger brothers, do sewing, embroidering, and housekeeping, and later
